


Get Drunk to Love Him

by frantstic



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Inspired by The Perks of Being a Wallflower, M/M, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 22:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19365388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frantstic/pseuds/frantstic
Summary: Dan Howell gets drunk at parties to hook up with Phil Lester and Phil isn’t complaining.





	Get Drunk to Love Him

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome back to this fic, which was on my ao3 for a while before I deleted it, and now I'm posting it again (with a few edits!). Anyway, if you enjoy this fic, please follow me on tumblr, where I'll be posting a lot more fics and where you can read them first!
> 
> Thank you, and enjoy!
> 
> tumblr: dnpeas

Phil was tired.

He had been up all night studying for a maths test, but after his step-sister called him from PJ’s house at one in the morning, he could hear in the tone of her voice that this was urgent.

So Phil shrugged on a coat and stepped into the dead of the night, across the street and through the small outcropping of woods that he would’ve been more terrified of had he enough energy to be so. The empty sound of his solitary footsteps led him down another road and through an alley to the back entrance of a small house with the sound of good music pumping through the walls. 

He rapped twice on the door and waited in the chilly winter air, pulling the sleeves of his coat over his hands. 

The door flew open with a burst of color and sound. Phil’s step-sister was staring up at him from the threshold. 

“Phil!” she gasped. “You actually came!”

“I had nothing better to do.” 

Louise’s green eyes widened. Phil’s dad married Louise’s mom a couple months ago, and the two of them had hit it off immediately. They had grown so close they might as well be natural siblings, despite looking nothing alike. They spent so much time together that their classmates suspected them to be dating, despite the fact that Phil liked boys and they were related (technically). After clearing up the rumors, Phil and Louise were free to sink back into obscurity and peruse record shops without being harassed by society’s expectations. 

“Right! Anyway! You’ll never believe who’s here!” She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him through the threshold. Phil barely had time to turn and close the door behind them. 

Phil followed his sister through the house. Most of their year frequented PJ’s parties, but the only people Louise and her brother cared about were in the basement. They stayed away from the crowds that stayed upstairs, flirting and playing their social games. Phil and his friends were always down below, where no one would bother them, getting high to good music.

The smell of weed and spilled alcohol filled the air as Phil clunked down the steps. PJ greeted him with a grin, watching from his spot on the couch shoved into the corner of the room. Phil waved at the familiar faces while stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, until his eyes fell on someone who was not so familiar to their gatherings. 

Dan Howell, who was drunk off his ass. 

Phil had only seen the star of the football team on the pitch, dribbling between players like water sifting through fingers, or roaming the halls with his ever-expanding posse. He had never seen him like this, a mess of curly hair and wild eyes, and with the smell of vodka clouding Phil’s thoughts. 

“What’s he doing here?” Phil whispered into Louise’s ear. His sister shrugged. 

“No one knows. He just showed up, chugged two beers, did a few shots, and now he’s fuckin’ wasted.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Phil had stared at him for too long. He and Dan locked eyes, and Phil was about to look away when Dan stumbled drunkenly across the room and to Phil’s side. Louise giggled and drifted towards PJ’s couch. Despite her state, she had easily picked up that she was unwanted. That’s why Phil loved her. He shook his head to clear his head and turned his attention back to Dan. 

“Hey,” Phil started. Dan smiled.

“Phil Lester,” Dan replied, pointing at Phil. Phil bit back a laugh.

“That’s my name.” 

Dan’s brow furrowed. “I had something to say…”

“Yeah?”

He blinked rapidly. “Can you, uh, come with me?”

Phil nodded. He glanced over his shoulder at Louise, who was sitting next to PJ, laughing obnoxiously. No one else was paying attention to their exchange. Phil didn’t see any harm in following his wasted classmate through PJ’s crowded home, apologizing for Dan’s drunken staggers. 

Dan led Phil up the staircase in the back of the house, and down the hall, somehow finding an empty guest room on the first try. Phil closed the door behind them and turned to Dan, heart thumping with curiosity. Or perhaps with anticipation. Fear? Dan collapsed onto the bed, flushed with heat, his face illuminated by streetlight straying through the cracks in the open window, eyes glowing in the harsh yellow. 

“Dan, what’s going on?” Phil risked asking. 

“Sit,” Dan commanded, patting the space next to him on the bed. Phil really didn’t want to, but there was no telling what drunk Dan could do to him if he didn’t obey. “Okay, good.”

They stared at each other, the room silent save for the sound of Dan’s heaving breaths and Phil’s thundering heart. Dan had the most amazing brown eyes, Phil noticed. Some brown eyes were dull and plain, but his _glowed_ , like they were full of tiny stars. 

And then, without warning or cause, they were kissing.

Phil had no idea what was happening, even as he tangled his hands in Dan’s hair and pulled him closer until their chests were touching. Phil didn’t know why Dan Howell was kissing him. 

All he knew was that he didn’t want him to stop.

-

“What happened Saturday night?”

Louise was looking up at him expectantly as they drove to school on Monday morning. Phil’s knuckles grew white around the steering wheel. After he and Dan made out for a couple minutes, they stared at each other until Phil made some excuse about homework and took off. He still wasn’t quite sure what happened. Did he do something to make Dan think he wanted to kiss him? Was Phil unwittingly asking for it? And since when did Dan Howell kiss boys?

“Um…”

“C’mon Phil, you’ve got to tell me,” Louise pleaded, pressing her hands together and batting her thick eyelashes. 

“Alright, alright. I was going to tell you anyway,” he grumbled, pulling into a parking space and leaning his head against the back of the seat. “Dan Howell kissed me.”

“What?!”

Phil nodded as Louise shook her head in disbelief.

“Howell is gay?!”

“I guess.” Phil shrugged. “He was also really drunk, it probably didn’t mean anything.”

Louise shook her head again, more defiantly this time. “No, no. He showed up at PJ’s completely sober. He was _looking for you_!” 

“Louise, let’s be real here.” Phil turned to face his sister. “Even if Dan did purposefully hook up with me, it was just that, a hook up. And he’s probably forgotten about it. I’ve let it go, and now so should you.”

But the problem was, Phil hadn’t let it go. His mind wandered all through first period, like he could still taste Dan’s mouth on his and his soft curls in his hands. He wanted to kiss him again, he wanted to satisfy that guttural urge in the pit of his stomach that was craving more and more of Dan Howell. 

Phil was shoving his books in his locker after his classes had finished when a familiar voice echoed from down the hallway. Phil shifted his eyes subtly to the side, catching Dan’s black Vans and a pair of his friend’s in his peripheral vision. He looked back to his locker quickly. 

“Were you at Liguori’s Saturday night?” the friend asked. 

“Yeah, mate, but I was so wasted, I don’t remember a thing.”

Phil turned abruptly, just in time to lock eyes with Dan. He looked startled, like he wasn’t expecting Phil to actually face him. Dan held his gaze for a couple seconds, a few agonizingly long seconds, before he turned away. 

Phil stared at the back of Dan’s head as he walked down the hallway, not looking back.

\- 

The pattern continued. 

Dan arrived at PJ’s party and made his way into the basement nearly every Saturday. Every time, Phil watched from the shadows in the corner of the room as Dan pounded shots and downed cans of beer until he was wasted beyond belief. And only then did he emerge.

Because he knew it was wrong, following Dan into the still empty guest room and pressing him against the wall, running his hands up and down his body and his lips down his neck, taking all he wanted from him. Phil knew he was getting nothing out of this _relationship_ , or whatever one could call it. But Dan was a drug that had entered his system and every week Phil found himself needing his fix. 

And yet, the next day beckoned the same response. _I was so wasted, I don’t remember a thing_. And Phil was left slamming his locker closed, driving home in silence with Louise watching him, and trying to stifle his anger and sadness through the thin walls of their house. Sometimes it didn’t work, and Louise would knock on his bedroom door asking if everything was alright, her voice laced with concern. Phil would let her in and they would sit on the floor talking about Dan and how life wasn’t fair. 

But despite the toxicity, despite the fact that he was hooked, and despite the fact that it was killing him, Phil couldn’t make himself quit. 

-

PJ always went all out for New Year’s, but this was the first year Phil was dreading the party. 

“Why are you so worried?” Louise was putting on her earrings in the passenger seat; giant, dangly gold things that looked like they were going to pull off her earlobes at any moment.

“I’m not,” Phil scoffed, checking his fringe in the rearview mirror. 

“Don’t lie to me,” Louise scolded. “You’re nervous about seeing Dan.”

“Whatever,” Phil grumbled. He parked next to PJ’s driveway and stalked out of the car. “I won’t do it this time.”

Louise and him stood, unmoving, on the stoop. “Hook up with Dan?”

“Yeah. Not tonight.”

_Ha_. 

“You actually bought champagne?” Phil snickered, holding up a plastic cup full to the brim.

“Hell yeah.” PJ clinked his cup against Phil’s, spilling onto both of their laps. “I’m classy, Lester.”

Phil was wedged on the sofa in PJ’s basement between him and Louise, their thighs pressed together and hairlines damp with sweat from the body heat and the heavy air. 

“Oh look, Howell’s here,” PJ said, raising up a hand to wave. Dan was pretty much considered a regular now. As long as he didn’t take any of their weed or insulted their music taste, he was allowed in. And he didn’t. He mostly just drank and waited. 

Phil stared at Dan from behind the rim of his cup. 

“Screw him.”

PJ raised his eyebrows. “I thought that was your job.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “Yeah, not going to happen.”

“You mean you haven’t fucked him yet?” 

“ _No_ , PJ. Stop being so loud.” Phil swallowed a gulp of champagne. “I’m over it.”

“Bullshit.”

It was bullshit.

Hours later, Phil was pressing Dan against the soft sheets, trying to get every bit of their skin to touch. Dan moaned from beneath him, the sound sending electric currents down Phil’s spine. Phil latched his lips onto Dan’s collarbone, his skin like fire, as Dan gripped his hair in his tight fists, squirming beneath Phil and letting out more of those moans. 

Phil reached for the hem of Dan’s shirt, pulling it over his head and trailing kisses down his chest. He could feel Dan hard against his thigh, his heart beating beneath his lips. Phil tossed away his own shirt, and started to unzip Dan’s jeans, his fingers not listening to his head and his heart ignoring his mind. And Dan was not helping. He was gasping breathlessly as Phil covered his body with his mouth, not stopping him as Phil pulled off his own jeans and threw their boxers onto the floor.

And maybe Phil could’ve stopped, maybe he could’ve snapped himself out of it. But really, how could he? 

-

Dan’s head was spinning, stabs of white heat pounding at his skull. Phil Lester was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear, he couldn’t _hear anything_.

God, how much had he drank?

He couldn’t remember. He could barely remember his own name, barely formulate a single thought. Why did he have to do this, destroy himself just to hook up with Phil Fucking Lester? 

_Because he needed him_.

“DAN!”

_Because it was the only way_. 

“Dan!”

_The only way_. 

“Dan...”

Dan drowned, swimming in a sea of three colors at the same time. 

-

“Louise!”

Phil jumped into the basement and grabbed his sister’s arm. His jeans were falling off his hips and he hadn’t had the place of mind to throw on a shirt. Louise raised her eyebrows. 

“You okay there Phil--”

“Dan blacked out,” he interrupted. Her eyes widened. “I… I think it’s bad.”

Louise downed the rest of her champagne in one gulp and followed Phil into the guest room. Dan was collapsed on the bed in his boxers (which Phil did remember to put back on), face pale and hair curly with sweat. His mouth was tinted purple and his chest was rising so slowly Phil had to lean in closer to make sure he was even breathing at all.

“What the hell happened!?” Louise placed the back of her hand against his forehead. “Oh my God he’s freezing. Phil, call 999.”

“What!?”

“Now!” Louise shook Dan’s shoulder, placing two fingers against his neck. “How much did he drink?”

“I don’t know!” Phil hissed. _I never know_. He dialed 999 with shaky fingers, adrenaline and blood pounding in his ears.

_999, what is your emergency_?

-

Phil had to wait for a couple of hours for the nurse to return. It was 23:30 on New Year’s Eve and she was still working. Phil felt bad for her. 

“Are you family?” she asked Phil. He blinked. 

“No.”

“Is his family here?”

Phil had no idea where Dan’s family was. He hadn’t thought to call them. “They’re out of town.”

“Alright then, come on inside.”

Dan was sleeping, his face pale. There was an IV stuck in the crook of his arm, white liquid piping through the plastic tube. Phil was struck by how small and fragile he looked. How vulnerable he was without the heavy smell of popularity or alcohol. 

“You have about half an hour until we have to ask you to leave,” the nurse told him gently, her hand brushing his shoulder lightly. Phil nodded in acknowledgment and waited for the door to close before he let himself break down. 

He leaned against the wall, tears rolling off his cheeks and splashing against the tiled floor. It seemed to be hitting him only just now. _He could have died._ Phil let out a heaving sob, running his hands through his hair and struggling to catch a breath through his tears. The collar of the gift shop shirt Louise had to buy him to get into the hospital was soaked. 

“Phil…?”

Phil’s eyes drifted over to Dan. His lashes fluttered open as he let out a small breath and shifted in the hospital bed. Phil’s heart dropped to his toes. 

“You’re awake.” Phil wiped at his eyes, sniffing shakily. 

“What happened?”

“The nurse said it was alcohol poisoning,” Phil replied. “You went too far.”

Dan blinked. “I drank too much?”

“Yeah, you did. Because apparently I’m too repulsive to kiss otherwise.”

Phil didn’t mean to attack him so soon after they started talking. It had just spilled out. 

“Phil…”

“You know, I just don’t get it.” Phil’s anger spiked, filling the hole his fear had left in its wake. “I looked it up on my phone, you could’ve died.”

“Come on, Phil, I can handle myself.”

“No you can’t, Dan, you’re in the fucking hospital, why couldn’t you just… kiss me without almost killing yourself?”

“Because I was scared!” 

Phil sighed and crossed the room to sit at the end of the hospital bed. He felt his face soften. “I get it, being gay is scary or whatever. But if you’re not out, it’s okay I could help you or something.”

“I’m not _gay_ , I...,” Dan trailed off, as if he didn't know what else to say. “I’m on the football team. I have a girlfriend--”

That was something Phil forgot about. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a popular topic between them.

“--but you’re the first guy I’ve actually, you know, liked.”

They watched each other wordlessly before Phil broke the thick silence. “Really?” 

The color was definitely returning to Dan’s face now. “Uh, yeah.”

Phil let himself grin. “Look, Dan. I really don’t know you because every single time we’ve ever had a one on one interaction, we’ve filled it with activities other than talking.” Dan’s brow furrowed. “But you’re also really hot.”

It was Dan’s turn to grin. “Thanks.”

“But I do want to actually get to know you.”

Dan ran a hand through his curls. “Okay. Yeah, okay. But how?”

Phil thought about it for a second. “Come to PJ’s parties. Hang out in the basement, with us. It’s my best friends and my sister, they won’t tell anyone. They won’t care. People like us, we see things, and we understand.”

“I think I could get in on that.”

“Good.” Phil leaned over and pressed a kiss to Dan’s sweaty forehead. “I’ll be waiting.”

And he would be waiting. Phil would wait for as long as it took for Dan to step foot in that basement without plans to drink himself to the brink of death. Because there was something about Dan that led Phil this far and Phil wanted to find out what that something was. 

“Goodnight, Phil.”

“Night, Dan.” Phil glanced at the clock on the far wall. “Oh, and Happy New Year.”


End file.
